About 50 nurses and their family members and friends held an hour-long informational picket today outside Las Palmas Medical Center to bring public attention to what the nurses say is a staffing problem hurting patient care at the hospital.

Like in Washington, the people running San Leandro failed to listened to their constituents with tangible action. It took the City of San Leandro three years to make a move on the issue with this week's filing of an amicus brief in support of theEden Township Healthcare District's appellate case against Sutter Health to maintain services at San Leandro Hospital. Why did it take so long? The same reason why Congress is unable to help its constituents with jobs and a positive belief in the future: poor leadership that comes with institutional hand-wringing.

A Denver mother whose son died after she was unable to fill his multiple prescriptions because pharmacists kept telling her he was not eligible for Medicaid — even though records proved he was — has filed a lawsuit against the city and county of Denver.

Carrying signs with slogans like “Chop from the top,” and chanting “Nurses united will never be divided,” hundreds of University of Michigan nurses rallied Saturday to show support for a favorable contract for their 4,000-member union.

If America truly is serious about dealing with its deficit problems, there's a fairly simple solution. But you're probably not going to like it: Enact a single-payer health care plan.

Confidence shot. Tempers up. Patience spent. This economy has Americans feeling cooked. It had been one bummer of a summer, conservatives and liberals agreed, even before the news late Friday that Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s top credit rating from AAA to AA-plus. The previous day, after a federal debt deal averted government default, the European credit crisis and fears of a double-dip U.S. recession crashed the Dow anyway — erasing all gains of 2011.